The invention relates generally to computing devices and, more particularly, to graphical user interfaces that run on computing devices.
Computing devices, such as desktop computers, laptops, and handheld computers, personal digital assistants, palm computers, and telephone handsets that incorporate a display, have become progressively easier to use especially due to the wide availability of operating systems that employ graphical user interfaces. These graphical user interfaces make use of metaphorical desktops and file folders that make computing devices increasingly more intuitive to manipulate. By way of the graphical user interface, a user can open files and/or programs as application windows that enable a drag and drop operation for copying or moving an icon from one application to another.
In a graphical user interface, the term “drag” refers to moving an icon on a display screen. The icon may represent a computing device file, computing device program, or any other desktop object or image. To drag an icon across a display screen, the user typically selects the icon with a mouse button and moves the mouse while keeping the mouse button depressed. The term “drag” is also used more generally to refer to any operation in which the mouse button is held down while the mouse is moved. For example, a user might drag the mouse to select a block of text.
Both the WINDOWS™ and MACINTOSH™ operating systems permit numerous application windows to be displayed on the computing device desktop at the same time. As used herein, the term “application window” (hereinafter referred to simply as a “window”) is considered to be a division of a computing device display screen that typically encompasses a rectangular area. In a graphical user interface, windows can be opened, closed, and moved within the screen area. The user can control the size and shape of the windows. Windows can be overlapped, and overlapping windows can be brought to the front (meaning that their entire contents can be viewed by the user) or sent to the back (meaning that one or more windows can obscure a portion of the window from the user).
On occasion, a user may simultaneously display several application windows on a computing device display, thus requiring the user to manipulate the windows so as to be able to view the entire contents of the display. If the user has a large number of files or applications open at one time, it can be difficult to select the windows between which an icon is to be dragged. The user may have to resize and relocate multiple windows in order to accomplish this task.
In addition to the above-identified Figures, an exemplary script file has been included in Appendix A to illustrate the program commands that distribute the last two opened windows using the WINDOWS™ operating system. The execution of the commands of the script file is brought about by the activation of a multimedia key present on many keyboards.